


Photographs

by Ryenan



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Claudia Stilinski Memories, College Student Stiles Stilinski, Established Relationship, Fluff and Mush, Hale Family Feels, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Photography, Pyrophobia, Sentimental, Sheriff Stilinski Knows, Steter Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-24 11:08:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17099459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ryenan/pseuds/Ryenan
Summary: Peter is sentimental, not that anyone would know - most of the time, he keeps his heart locked in a fire safe to protect what little he has left. Stiles, with a touch of magic, helps him display his photographs and grow his heart.Established Relationship, College-Age Stiles, Sheriff Stilinski Knows.Happy Steter Secret Santa to Cap-Who!





	1. Chapter 1

Stiles clatters down the worn wood steps into the vault behind Peter, loose limbed and happy in the warm night air. He’s slightly taller and slightly broader than the last time he stepped foot in the high school, and slightly less loose-limbed and clumsy, but not by much.

Peter doesn’t mind his noise, and how much space he seems to take up swinging his arms around – He distracts him from the dark, the old pack scents of the vault.

“Please don’t fall down the stairs, Stiles. There’s no way I can carry you and the crates out of here, and I’m only making one trip.”

Stiles sees the grin on Peter’s face from behind him, through the twitch of his ears, and reaches for his shoulder. The vault is rather dark, not much moonlight bouncing down the steps, and his fingers brush across the back of Peter’s neck before catching hold of his shirt collar.

The touch makes him shiver, but isn’t particularly gentle – Stiles’ fingers fumbling in the dark remind Peter, yet again, of just how human he is.

“Can you see?”

“Not really. I left my phone in the car, do you have yours?”

Peter slows his descent on the stairs as he pulls his phone from his pocket and shakes it slightly to turn the flashlight on. Stiles’ hand slips from his shoulder roughly, the drag of his fingertips heavy all the way to his wrist, hand, until the phone is out of his grip.

“You okay down here?”

Peter watches the dust kick up around his boots in the cast of the flashlight. The bright cold swath fades out in the little cellar room, mingling with the sparse moonlight, and his voice catches in his throat.

“It’s fine. I had to come down here a few weeks ago.”

 

 

 

A few weeks ago, he and Stiles were rolling around on the floor of his apartment, eating and drinking and fucking – glorious, languid sex, interspersed with chocolate and wine and breaks to suck dark bleeding marks into Stiles’ delicate thighs – and talking, spilling secrets and fears and truths as fragile and delicate as Stiles’ skin.

Peter had spent the early afternoon in the vault, the trap door closed above him, adding photos to a scrapbook by the light of a miserable little LED lantern. They were silly photos, worthless snaps of the apartment, the pack, the woods around the ruin of the house. Nothing special, nothing he didn’t have a half dozen of already – but these, these all had Stiles in them. The edge of a sleeve, a book left out on the table, the imprint of him on each glossy sheet.

He wanted to call. He was going to call. He was going to put down the photo, the one with Stiles’ silhouette blackened and haloed by the glow of the plate glass windows, and march up the rickety steps into the fading light and call Stiles.

And then Stiles called him.

They were one day off a full moon, and every interrupted kiss and secret touch was burning through Stiles blood, and he was talking way too fast for Peter to track.

“Look, I’m already out, why don’t I come to you?”

“Just come home. I’m at home. Your house, I mean, not that I’m trying to move in or anything – “

That was how Stiles had first seen the pictures. Peter had dropped the half-empty paper folder of them on the coffee table with his keys, no time to lock them away in the fire safe with Stiles mouth already on his. In a lull, between rounds of fucking and kisses and sips of wine, his too-fast and too-clever eyes spotted the little package and pulled the glossy slips of paper free without any pause.

He’d wanted to see the rest, and Peter couldn’t say no. They set their wine glasses aside, and Peter led a blanket-wrapped Stiles into the spare bedroom-turned-study, to the fire safe. They held exact copies of the photobooks he had been working on in the vault – one to keep and one to see, but always stored safely, protected. He wouldn’t lose everything again, couldn’t bear the thought of it –

“The fire safe is a good idea. I should probably put copies of my – my photos of mom – in dad’s safe. We don’t have a lot of photos of her.”

Peter pulls out a book, dated 2008, and hands it over to Stiles. He has a hard time looking at these, thinking about that year, but Stiles doesn’t let him walk away.

Stiles almost drops the blanket, but he gets a hold on Peter’s arm and drags it around his own waist, putting Peter snuggly at his back, little choice but to wrap his other arm around Stiles and set his chin on the swell of the blanket around his neck, mouth much too close to the pale curve of his ear.

“two thousand eight, huh. Did these survive in the house?” He’s careful, reverent, with the pages, even though each photo is secure in its plastic slip.

“They survived because I never got to pick them up from the shop. When I went to pick up an order…a few years ago, after everything, they had this dusty old envelope, that they never bothered to throw away. Seven years, in the shop.”

“Wow. What luck, Peter, really. Is that Derek?”

It is Derek, with softer eyes and a slighter build, holding a wolfed-out toddler by the ankles and looking horrified. They go through the entire album, slowly, Peter naming names and telling stories, Stiles pulling the words from him with simple questions and quiet murmurings, as needed.

When they reach the back of the book, Stiles puts it away, in the right spot, and locks the safe back without prompting.

“Cook something for me, and let me tell you about my mom.”


	2. Chapter 2

“What’s the organization scheme here? Do you know where we should be looking?”

The cellar is a cramped space, with a low celling and packed dirt floors, and there are loose crates and bins around a central worktable. There are some shelves against the far wall, but Peter pulled most everything off of them when he noticed the dry-rot.

“Hopefully, but there are some books that shouldn’t leave here – we’ll have to go through the crates and check before we take anything up.”

Peter thought that statement would pique Stiles’ interest, but he doesn’t question it – something else must have caught his attention.

 “Stiles?”

Peter turns, gently, trying not to kick up too much dust, and his breath catches. 

Stiles had gone for the newest looking box of the bunch, a heavy metal fire safe Peter had had a terrible time carrying down the stairs a few years ago, and he had magic’d open the lock. The safe isn’t full, only a half-dozen slim scrapbooks and a few envelopes of loose photos, but it’s quite possibly the second most important thing, after Stiles himself, in the whole cellar to Peter.

“When did you bring these down here?” 

“These are the originals. The books at the loft are just copies.”

Peter moves to Stiles’ side, just a few steps in the tight space, and plucks the scrapbook from his hands. It’s one of the older ones, made up of the few photos that survived the fire, that weren’t backed up online. These are photos from his childhood, and he doesn’t want to look at them now. 

He shuts the book gently, only to see Stiles sliding another one out of the safe. 

“Stiles, put them back. We don’t have time for this.” 

“I know, I know, I just – I didn’t realize how scared you must be. Of losing everything, again, even your memories. Is that why you don’t frame any of them? Because you could lose them?”

Peter doesn’t know what to say to that, doesn’t want to Stiles to know how quickly he managed to flay him open, right down to his heart, but he knows the silence is telling in and of itself.

“I’m sorry. For killing you, that way. No excuses – no ‘buts’ here – I knew what happened to you, your family, and what I did was inexcusable. I should have done it some other way.”

His voice is dark and low, and he’s staring down at a photograph three-quarters charred, with just a hint of hair and wall and a window left, an unidentifiable scene that Peter couldn’t throw out.

“You did what needed to be done.”

“No! You didn’t deserve – “

“A monster born of fire, cleansed by fire, returned to sanity the same way I left it. You saved my life, Stiles. Let’s not talk about it, anymore. We have a job to do.”

 

 

 

They take the books back to Peter’s loft, but don’t spend the night digging through the dusty volumes – Stiles found what they needed just by flipping through the pages in the car. Stiles wants to go home, to shower and sleep and do a little research on the idea burning in the back of his mind, but doesn’t want to leave Peter alone either.

“So I need to go home – just for an hour or two – but can I come back? In a bit? Or are you –“

Peter looks at him, distinctly unimpressed, and waves one slow hand around the loft.

“Stiles, not to be crude, but I’d say that when there isn’t a surface in the house we haven’t fucked on and you’re wearing more of my marks than hours in the day, you are free to come and go as you like.”

“That’s fair. So I’ll be back – can I have the table? I have an idea, I need some research space.”

“Anything I can help with?”

Stiles realizes Peter won’t let him do what he wants to do if he gets even a glimpse of it before it’s ready – he doesn’t like anything to do with fire, or magical experimentation, or both at the same time, so Stiles’ idea is really shaping up into something unacceptable.

“Ah – actually – no. You ok on your own tonight? This – I want it to be a surprise, actually. And my dad, haven’t spent a lot of time with him this week – “

Peter has to cut him off, mid ramble, so they don’t stand there all night in a one sided debate about whether or not Peter can spend one night alone.

“Stiles, go home. Have dinner with your father, spend some time with him, sleep in your own bed. Don’t come back until tomorrow morning, and cast the spell then.”

Stiles scent curdles with something akin to guilt, like the bitter tinge of cranberries on cream, and Peter wonders when he lost his silver tongue.

“Come back tomorrow morning, please, and I’ll make you breakfast before any spell work, and we can spend the rest of the day in bed. I am kicking you out for one night because there is something I need to do, for you, and it’s better as a surprise too.”

That, and a smattering of kisses, gets Stiles out into the warm night and down the apartment stairs.

**Author's Note:**

> The other chapters are on their way, just giving them a final polish! (I wish I wasn't so slow :/ sorry! they'll be up by tomorrow at the latest)


End file.
